HP System Dictionary/XL General Reference Manual Vol 2 - Part 1 SDINIT (32256-90005)

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that are needed in the target dictionary to support the occurrences that will be merged into it.

When you merge structure, SDUTIL copies the following structure definitions:

• Attributes

• Entity Types and their associated attributes

• Relationship Classes

• Relationship Types and their associated attributes

When you merge a version, SDUTIL copies the following data:

• E ntities and their attribute values including those of type alias and variable length, synonyms, and

common version links if needed

• Relationships and their attribute values including those of type alias and variable length, and common

version links if needed

Merging Security. In addition to occurrenc es you can also merge dictionary security information. For

the ﬁrst release merging security information will be limited to the DA since only the DA has full

capability to retrieve information about all other scopes and occurrences owned by them. If the option to

merge security is chosen, then the following security information will be copied:

• scopes and their passwords and scope rights

• scope entity associations

• scope relationship associations

If you decide not to copy security, you can specify whether to copy just the occurrences owned by the scope,

or all occurrences accessible to the scope. If you specify the option to merge only the occurrences owned by

the scope, then only those occurrences owned by the logon scope will be copied. If you specify the option to

merge all occurrences accessible to the scope, then all occurrences owned by the logon scope, accessible

through the sensitivity attribute values of public read and public modify, and accessible through explicit

scope-entity and scope-relationship associations will be copied.

Handling Conﬂicts. When you merge data into an existing dictionary, SDUTIL may not always create

an exact replica of the source dictionary. If it did, it could cause some unwanted and possibly damaging

side effects to the dictionary, especially when structure changes are involved. As a general rule, SDUTIL

will take the approach of merging data with no damaging side effects. The following text explains how

SDUTIL handles various kinds of conﬂicts.

STRUCTURE CONFLICTS. When you merge structure, it is possible that a structure deﬁnition exists,

but its external names are different. Changing the external name of the target structure deﬁnition may

not always be appropriate, because programs may exist which rely on external names of the dictionary

structure. For this reason, when there is a structure name conﬂict, SDUTIL will report the difference, but

won't change it. The name conﬂict in structure can occur for attribute names, relationship class names

and entity type names.

Attributes can have different data types, lengths and edit values. If the difference between the attributes

in the source and target dictionaries is the attribute's data type, SDUTIL will terminate the merge process

because changing the type is not allowed in the dictionary. Although the target attribute could be deleted

and recreated, this procedure will delete all the existing values of the attribute in the dictionary, and is not

recommended. If the difference is in the length, then the source and target lengths will be compared. If

the target attribute length is shorter than the source, then the target attribute length will be modiﬁed to

have the same length as the source. If the target length is longer than the source, then SDUTIL will report

the difference, but not modify the target attribute length. This is because when an attribute length is

shortened, all values of the attribute may be truncated or modiﬁed depending upon the type. If the

difference is in the edit values, SDUTIL will preserve the existing edit values and add the ones that are in